Geography

The United Kingdom, consisting of Great Britain (England,
Wales,
and
Scotland
) and
Northern Ireland
, is twice
the size of New York State. England, in the southeast part of the British
Isles, is separated from Scotland on the north by the granite Cheviot
Hills; from them the Pennine chain of uplands extends south through the
center of England, reaching its highest point in the Lake District in the
northwest. To the west along the border of Wales—a land of steep
hills and valleys—are the Cambrian Mountains, while the Cotswolds, a
range of hills in Gloucestershire, extend into the surrounding shires.

Important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Thames, Humber,
Tees, and Tyne. In the west are the Severn and Wye, which empty into the
Bristol Channel and are navigable, as are the Mersey and Ribble.

Government

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary
democracy, with a queen and a parliament that has two houses: the House of
Lords, with 574 life peers, 92 hereditary peers, and 26 bishops; and the
House of Commons, which has 651 popularly elected members. Supreme
legislative power is vested in parliament, which sits for five years
unless dissolved sooner. The House of Lords was stripped of most of its
power in 1911, and now its main function is to revise legislation. In Nov.
1999, hundreds of hereditary peers were expelled in an effort to make the
body more democratic. The executive power of the Crown is exercised by the
cabinet, headed by the prime minister.

England has existed as a unified entity since the 10th century; the
union between
England
and
Wales,
begun in 1284 with
the Statute of Rhuddlan, was not formalized until 1536 with an Act of
Union; in another Act of Union in 1707, England and
Scotland
agreed to
permanently join as
Great Britain
; the
legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was implemented in 1801,
with the adoption of the name the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 formalized a partition of Ireland;
six northern Irish counties remained part of the United Kingdom as
Northern Ireland
and the
current name of the country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, was adopted in 1927.

History

Stonehenge and other examples of prehistoric culture are all that
remain of the earliest inhabitants of Britain. Celtic peoples followed.
Roman invasions of the 1st century
B.C.
brought
Britain into contact with continental Europe. When the Roman legions
withdrew in the 5th century
A.D.
, Britain fell
easy prey to the invading hordes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from
Scandinavia and the Low Countries. The invasions had little effect on the
Celtic peoples of Wales and Scotland. Seven large Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
were established, and the original Britons were forced into Wales and
Scotland. It was not until the 10th century that the country finally
became united under the kings of Wessex. Following the death of Edward the
Confessor (1066), a dispute about the succession arose, and William, Duke
of Normandy, invaded England, defeating the Saxon king, Harold II, at the
Battle of Hastings (1066). The Norman conquest introduced Norman French
law and feudalism.